


I know that I’m greedy and want something even more perfect

by rydellon



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - High School, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, People are Assholes, chenle is rich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 05:31:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rydellon/pseuds/rydellon
Summary: Chenle goes through his life with friendships that only mean something from one side. His.





	I know that I’m greedy and want something even more perfect

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this was made out of complete procrastination

The first time Chenle got invited to a birthday party was in kindergarden. 

He has been mostly busy during the first few years of his life, days being taken up with piano and vocal lessons until his parents told him he’d be going to kindergarten in September. His mother had wanted him to have a normal schooling experience, just like she had. 

It had been for a boy in his class, someone Chenle had talked to maybe once in his life. His parents bought the newest model of nerf gun and Chenle helped his mom wrap it up real nice. That was the first time Chenle had wrapped a gift as well.

The kid was ecstatic when he ripped it open, tearing the packaging off and immediately shooting one of the bullets over his backyard fence. 

When they broke the piñata the kid gave Chenle some extra candy. 

Chenle was invited to every other birthday party that year, and the rest of them throughout his kindergarten years, both of his JK and SK classes taking great joy in Chenle being at their parties. 

It was in grade 2 that he figured it out. 

In kindergarten he had been the centre of attention, nurturing his personality into something outgoing and loud. In grade 1 his parents had banned anything that might take away from

his after school tutoring, or his piano and voice lessons. 

When people stopped talking to him in grade 1 he clued in a little, but it was in grade 2, when he would sit all alone in the playground and watch as other kids kicked soccer balls and shot hoops and played hopscotch that he realized something. 

He could get friends if he did the right thing, if he approached it the right way. Maybe that after school tutoring was teaching him a little bit too much. 

In grade 3 he introduced himself as Chenle Zhong, rich kid. 

In grade 3 Chenle got his first friend. 

The kid’s name was something long and complicated, so Chenle just took to calling him Riri. it got to the point where Chenle even forgot his real name. 

Riri had approached chenle on the second day of 3rd grade and told him that his parents had said that he should be Chenle’s friend. 

Chenle was so happy that he finally had someone to talk to, someone to play soccer and basketball with, someone to spend his (now freer, he had finished all of his piano levels) weekends with, that he forgot about what his original plan was all together. 

He played with Riri and Riri’s friends for about 6 months, until Riri’s birthday came in mid February, two days before Valentine's day. 

Chenle had bought Riri a scooter, because Riri had been saying that he wanted one for weeks and his parents had told him they wouldn’t get him one. 

Chenle also made Riri a card. it had taken him about an hour because he kept adding more and more decorations to it until it was a glitter glue sticker monstrosity. Chenle loved it. 

The party was chenle’s 53rd, and it didn’t go nearly as well as the previous 52. 

Riri had ripped open the scooter and taken it out, immediately going and jumping on it, riding around the back deck of his house before taking it out front, the rest of the partygoers trailing behind him. 

Chenle stayed back and watched as the unopened card he had spent time on got swept up into the pile of wrapping paper and put in the trash. Chenle didn’t join the boys out front. 

He got home and cried. 

Riri stopped talking to him the next day and Chenle thought it was for the best. 

He spent the rest of the year watching Riri come to and from the school on the scooter, not once making eye contact or acknowledging him. 

Chenle didn’t introduce himself as rich in grade 4. 

For the next few years of elementary school Chenle was pretty much ignored. 

There were some group projects that he needed to get done but for the most part he lay low and did his part, opening himself up to conversation and trying to interject only to be shut down. 

He started growing into a shell, something so thick and built out of pain that it seemed like nobody could penetrate it at school, not even if they tried. 

They didn’t. 

It all changed when Chenle switched schools for middle school, his dad’s company relocating them to Korea. 

He joined 7th grade at a public middle school close to his house after having taken Korean lessons as well as 6th grade lessons for the entirety of the year before. 

People at school whispered about his Korean until they heard his name. 

In Korea he was Zhong Chenle, Jong Jinrak. 

In Korea people knew his name. 

In Korea he got friends. 

And honestly, he should have known better at this point. Grade 3 had been a jarring wake up call for him; a reality check that nobody had really needed, but was there. 

HJe didn’t learn. 

For his two years in middle school he built up a friend group, an extensive one at that. 

He was always out or at the cafeteria for lunch or after school, a constant litany of  _ Jinrak, can I have that _ or  _ Jinrak, could you buy me this _ or  _ Jinrak, I swear I’ll pay you back for this one thing _ . 

It was exhausting. His allowance from chores was being drained faster than it ever had, and that allowance money had been built up over years of not having friends. 

At the end of 8th grade he started saying no.  _ No I can’t buy you this today. No you can buy it yourself. Why haven’t you paid me back yet? _

Suddenly, going into high school, Chenle had no friends. 

Not because he had applied to, gotten into, and transferred to the School of Performing Arts for the coming year, but because he wouldn’t pay for anything anymore. 

Anytime someone tried to get close to him in freshman year he thought they were going to make him buy them something, going to take advantage of him again, or worse, use him and give him hope before dropping him when they found out he wasn’t a constant stream of money. 

He spent a lot of freshman year playing on the grand in the auditorium, taking out his frustration on the worn down black and white keys. 

He never noticed the boy sitting at the back of the aud, listening to him play. 

He didn’t actually notice this boy until, a week into Chenle’s sophomore year, he slammed down a lunch tray on the table across from Chenle and sat down. 

Part of the reason why Chenle wouldn’t have noticed him before was because this boy was a junior. Chenle also just didn’t talk to anybody. He chooses to think it’s because the boy was a junior. 

“Jinrak right?” the boy asks. 

“Chenle,” Chenle automatically responds. 

That was his first mistake. Acknowledgement is always the first step to him getting hurt. Stupid. 

“Nice. Chenle then,” the boy says. The way he pronounces Chenle’s name makes him think he’s has some experience with Chinese names before. 

No, bad. Don’t get curious. 

“I'm Lee Donghyuck. I'm here for dancing,” Donghyuck says. 

Chenle shoves another bite of sandwich into his mouth. 

“I wanted to talk to you because—“ here it comes “—I saw you playing piano in the aud like, all of last year—more watched, not saw—and I've decided to recruit you.”

“You’ve decided to what?” Chenle blurts out, slightly surprised that the first person at this school who held a casual conversation with him wasn’t asking for money.

Donghyuck smirked like he knew he was getting through to chenle and chenle threw his walls back up quickly, going back to eating his lunch. He bit a celery stick. Donghyuck kept talking. 

“Yeah so, I’m a fucking loser—“ Chenle snorted involuntary “—yeah fucking laugh it up. I'm older than you. Anyway I’m a loser and so are my friends, but we all have one thing in common. Arts. I’m a dancer, Jeno’s an actor, Mark can make music, Jisungie can dance as well I guess,” Donghyuck laughs, as if he just made a joke, “Renjun can do fucking anything if you give him an instrument. And you can play piano. What I’m saying is...well...shit I’m bad at this.”

Chenle sighs, taking another bite of celery. What’s it gonna be? If donghyuck didn’t ask earlier he would ask now. Piano? Guitar? Production materials? Dancing shoes? Chenle might actually buy them just to get Donghyuck off his back. 

“Do you wanna be friends?”

**Author's Note:**

> they become friends and chenle gets his first real friend group w the dreamies :D
> 
> [ **my cc** ](https://curiouscat.me/ry_dellon)
> 
> [ **my twt** ](https://twitter.com/sunjaes)


End file.
